Wednesday, April 9, 2014

Going for the Jugular!--Americans Could Learn from Taiwan's Sunflower Movement

No pushovers here! Student leaders Lin Fei-Fan and Chen Wei-Ting.

Extraordinary things are happening in Taiwan. The Sunflower Student Movement (some call it "Occupy Taiwan") has effected a major shift in the political landscape. As an American here in Taipei watching half from the sidelines, I'm deeply moved to see young people launch such an aggressive and well-targeted movement.

Having taught young people here for nearly two decades now, I know first hand what smart kids this country raises up. The Sunflower students' bold challenge to Taiwan's Kuomintang-led government has shown impressive strategic know-how; their bravery and brief, well-turned speeches have awoken millions here to the seriousness of the threat Taiwan's democracy now faces.

First a little background for those who haven't followed events or don't know much about Taiwan. I'll try to be concise, though doing so will mean simplifying what are quite complex issues.

Taiwan is a large island located in the South China Sea not far from Mainland China. It's a country of 23 million people with a multiparty democratic government. China has long claimed Taiwan as part of its territory, and for decades Taiwanese have been nervously studying China's every move, looking for signs Beijing may be preparing the long-threatened military takeover.

But in recent years the threat is not just a matter of missiles and battalions. As Taiwan's economy is increasingly integrated with China's, many here see Beijing carefully leveraging these links to gain influence over the country's elites and media. Indeed, why would China resort to military force if they could slowly annex Taiwan through economic means? One of the world's major economies, just across the Taiwan Strait, China wields enormous persuasive power over Taiwan's capitalist class.

Enter current president Ma Ying-Jeou. Rising up through the Kuomintang (KMT) party that long ruled the country (a party with strong ideological ties to China and the idea of a "one China" including Taiwan) Ma was for many Taiwanese suspicious from the start by virtue of his very party background. That they nonetheless elected him president was proof that initially most Taiwanese thought they could count on him to keep Beijing at bay, as other KMT leaders had done. Many of his party's elite, after all, had come from the generals who fought Mao's communist armies before retreating to Taiwan. Pro-China in a cultural sense, the Kuomintang was certainly not pro-communist China.

But then China isn't exactly communist any more, is it? It is only communist in name. And so when Ma began showing ever greater openness to Beijing, many in Taiwan were uneasy, feeling their president was playing into the hands of a government intent on taking away their democracy. Ma, in short, was a KMT leader with a difference: he didn't have the necessary wariness of China's "communist" leaders.

The Sunflower Student Movement arose in opposition to Ma's attempts to push through a new trade agreement with China (the Cross-Strait Service Trade Agreement). In March, KMT representatives in the legislature had, on Ma's orders, tried to ram through the trade agreement without the line-by-line review that had been planned. One KMT representative's attempt on March 17 to declare the treaty ratified after only 30 seconds of debate sparked public outrage. On the following night, student activists stormed and took over the legislative building in protest. Despite police attempts to expel them, they have remained there until the time of this writing, delivering speeches, speaking to the world press, calling out one the largest anti-government rallies in the country's history, and, finally, forcing wide fissures to appear in Ma's own ruling party.

In short, as far as student protest movements go, I'd say it's been a stunning success.

So what do we have here in this movement? Is this another fight against a free-trade agreement that will benefit the wealthy but harm the middle and working class? Yes, it is, for many here do not buy the Ma government's assertions that the Service Trade Agreement will be good for average Taiwanese.

But the fight is much more than that. It is also a citizens' movement in reaction to a clear national security threat. Many citizens are particularly horrified by this threat because it is being brought to them (signed, sealed, delivered, though undebated) by their very own smiling and bizarrely indifferent president. Indeed, there are many reasons to see the Service Trade Agreement as offering too wide an opening for Chinese meddling in Taiwan. With half a century of claims on the island under its belt, China poses a very tangible threat to Taiwan's sovereignty, and this agreement gives the nascent superpower yet more room to act. And there are, besides, many reasons to suspect this particular president cares little about Taiwan's democracy or the country's national integrity. If at least one defines this country as Taiwan.

One of the popular slogans seen on posters and tee-shirts in recent weeks has been "Fuck the government, we'll save the country ourselves." It's a response to the widespread feeling, based on Ma's actions, that the government here is more interested in serving its cross-straight business elites than the Taiwanese population.

Two days ago, the leader of the legislature, Wang Jyn-Ping, also of Ma's party but of a very different faction, visited the legislative building and greeted the students, announcing that he basically agreed with them and that he would not, once legislation resumed, do anything toward ratifying the treaty until the legislature had fulfilled one of the students' key demands: creation of a more democratic oversight mechanism for all future treaties signed with China.

The promise from Speaker Wang, a crucial figure in Taiwanese politics, has resulted in the students announcing yesterday that they would end their occupation of the building this Thursday. Some of student activists disagree with this move, but I personally think it's the most strategic one available at present.

Most people in Taiwan know very well that trade with China will continue, they just also strongly believe that this trade must be based on treaties properly vetted by the Taiwanese people--not treaties handed to them by paternalistic authoritarian executives with less than 10% public approval rating (as Ma had even before this standoff began!).

As for Wang's promise to legislate new oversight and apply it to the Service Trade Agreement, should the students trust him? It does sound like a ruse, doesn't it, especially given that Wang is of Ma's party. Once the students break their occupation, what's to stop the legislature from just going back to business and finding a way to ratify the treaty despite the clear wishes of the majority of Taiwanese and despite Wang's crystal clear vow?

In fact there are good reasons to assume the concession from Wang is an honest one. There's a lot of complex back-story here which I won't go into. In any case, it looks like the three-week occupation of Taiwan's Legislation Yuan will end this week.

The students have said that their movement is far from over, that after ending their occupation they will shift from "defense to offense". They proudly assert that with their action, and some blood spilled as well, they have created a nationwide movement. Having attended the huge rally last Sunday, I would have to agree. Taiwanese are suddenly much less wiling to be pushed around than they were only a few months ago. They've been re-democratized by a small group of very savvy and dedicated students. It is, as I've said, inspiring to watch. I'm thinking my own country's activists could learn some things from studying the Sunflower Movement's success.

Here are some of the words spoken yesterday by Chen Wei-Ting, one of the main student leaders (quoted from the Taipei Times):

“The students and civil groups have halted the forced passage of the agreement and demonstrated that [President] Ma [Ying-jeou’s (馬英九)] administration’s has lost legitimacy, because since 2008, it has been abusing power, making arbitrary decisions, breaching the rule of law, violating human rights and causing democracy to retreat," he said.

“The movement has revealed how the current cross-strait interaction has been dominated by the clandestine, under-the-table trading between the Chinese Nationalist Party [KMT] and the Chinese Communist Party, a model that only helps the cross-strait political elite and capitalist corporations amass their fortunes and sacrifices the rights and benefits of most of the public.

“From this moment on, no behind closed doors negotiation is allowed; no regime can be permitted to make brazen moves to sell out Taiwan,” Chen said. “We Taiwanese, not anybody else, are the masters of this island.”